12 tone-row melody pt 1. not for beginners

[Paragons7]

I thought this was interesting and that I would share with others. Note row or tone row is non-repetitive ordering of the twelve notes in the chromatic scale. Arnold Schoenberg is the main Jew for this little trick ;-), but there have been others to devise other methods I'll be happy to post more if people are interested.


It gets a bit confusing after this

The principle behind twelve-tone music is that no one tone can be repeated until ALL 11 have been heard. Doing this makes the tones interpreted by there relation to each other, not the tonality of the key.

How to do this well first we gotta arrange the twelve-tones into a series of notes.
And we'll assign numbers to the notes of the scale.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/dizafacekiller/550px-Chromatic_scale_full_octave_a.png

C=1 Csharp=2 D=3 Dsharp=4 and so on

(Sorry I don't have any more visual aid for this part of the lesson)

Next we will write a melody.

When writing the melody we will use the numbers we have assigned to the notes. Feel free to go crazy with the rhythm also feel free to repeat notes. But as you could imagine this will get boring hearing the same thing over and over so you are allowed to transpose but intervals must stay the same you can also put any interval up or down an octave.

We also have several variations to work with.

12 tone row=

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/dizafacekiller/401px-Example_tone_row.png

Inversion=

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/dizafacekiller/401px-Inversion_tone_row.png

Retrogade=

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/dizafacekiller/401px-Retrograde_tone_row.png

Retrogade Inversion=

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v628/dizafacekiller/401px-Retrograde_inversion_tone_row.png

For inversion we flip all the intervals for example the minor thirds in the example are becoming falling minor thirds

Retrogade is just the order of the scale flipped around 12 to 1

Retrogade inversion is just the inverted series in retrogade.


Well that's all I have to say about this I am planning on doing the harmony for the twelve-tone technique so if you like this look for that in awhile.


And I hope someone enjoys this lesson or atleast grasps an idea of what I'm trying to explain.

[Paragons7]

sorry didn't mean to post so many times.

[spaivxx]

Used to experiment with Schoenberg like serial music. I have some pretty good books on the sunject. Good work here Paragons....

[Paragons7]

Used to experiment with Schoenberg like serial music. I have some pretty good books on the sunject. Good work here Paragons....

Thanks for the nice words yes Schoenberg is/was a genius and Duke Ellington and the likes that use 12 tone-row technique or like it decerve some respect.
I hope I made this lesson easy for other people to grasp.

[Millertime]

I've learned a bit about this tone row stuff in orchestra and its crazy, it can make some really cool music. good article!

[Paragons7]

Any criticism is appreciated :p